Well, by this time next month, Queens and the Rally vs Cancer will already be over - which just shows how close Wimbledon is. Hopefully Andy will be ok to take part, but whatever he decides, he hasn't much time to build up match practice and confidence.

Now you can see why for years and years many people in the UK thought that tennis was just Queens and Wimbledon We've just had our first Summers day! I agree with Greg Murray I think will play RG He's got 360 points to defend

Murray still on course to play in French Open as coach Lendl holds on to flightBy MALCOLM FOLLEY

Ivan Lendl still has a flight booked from America to Paris this week as Andy Murray keeps alive his chances of playing in the French Open, which begins next Sunday.Murray had feared the worst when he retired, due to a pain in his back, in mid-match against Spaniard Marcel Granollers at the Italian Open in Rome last Wednesday.But having had the results from an MRI scan in London, Murray is prepared to wait until midweek to assess his recovery.

Race against time: Andy Murray is a doubt for the French Open after suffering a back injuryThe 26-year-old British star plans to consult with ‘various specialists’ before making a judgment call.Last night, Lendl’s manager Jerry Solomon told the Mail on Sunday: ‘Ivan is currently scheduled to come to Paris. If Andy does withdraw from the French, then we will review plans and revise accordingly.’Understandably, Murray does not want to miss the second major of the year as he appreciates the value of playing as many matches as he can on the clay at Roland Garros as a critical part of his preparation for Wimbledon. Yet there is a fine line between entering the French Open and leaving it in worse physical condition than he is at present.Last summer, he played the French Open when he was in physical distress and attracted criticism from Virginia Wade, who accused Murray of being a ‘drama queen’ for his unconventional behaviour against Jarkko Nieminen.

Helping hand: Murray has endured a tough start to the European clay court seasonMurray waited until the eve of Wimbledon to forcibly hit back at Wade and others who had questioned how he acted in Paris. He revealed that he had needed eight pain-killing injections to be able to be pain-free for Wimbledon, where he was runner-up to Roger Federer.Three weeks later, of course, Murray returned to the Centre Court at the All England Club to win an Olympic gold medal by taking instant revenge against Federer, as well as winning a silver medal in partnership with Laura Robson in the mixed doubles. Murray may not have been in Rome, but he was still watching on TV, apparently exasperated by the commentary on Sky Sports by British former professional, Barry Cowan, as Rafael Nadal beat Tomas Berdych 6-2, 6-4.Murray tweeted: ‘Was pumped to watch Nadal v Berdych but Barry Cowan’s commentating has killed the match five games in. Poor guy has no idea what’s happening. Clueless.’

"I always like to give my maximum in every match and every tournament that I play. It can be the right thing or the wrong thing to do according to the various opinions of different people, but it is the way I've been taught and brought up in this sport. That's the way I've played all my life. I just like to compete, regardless of which tournament it is."

He added: "I've had many occasions in my career when I didn't feel well, when I was injured, and I played all the way through.

Mere pain will not prevent Andy Murray playing in the French Open. Like all players on the Tour, he wakes up every morning to the accepted collateral damage of his sport. At 26, Murray faces a more profound dilemma when he decides on Wednesday whether or not he will be at Roland Garros next weekend.

It is the same choice that hit Rafael Nadal like a drive volley in the face at the same age a year ago after he lost to Lukas Rosol at Wimbledon: how far can he push his body, day in, day out on painkillers to either fix a one-off injury or control a chronic condition, before he jeopardises not only his career but his health?

As Murray ponders the results of the MRI scan he had in London on Friday, consulting "various specialists" over the next few days, as he put it on Saturday, he knows he has only three options.

The most tempting is to play in Paris for as long as he can manage the pain in his lower back, as he has done for 18 months, and hope he does not do too much damage, either structurally to his body or through the steady buildup of drugs that deaden the pain.

More sensible, probably, would be to pull out and get as fit as he can for Wimbledon, accepting the underlying problem will still be there but not aggravated by playing any more on clay, which is the root cause of his troubles.

Or he can withdraw from the Tour altogether in mid-season, as Nadal did, and stay away for as long as it takes to get it right. That is by some way the toughest route: the Nadal Option.

The Spaniard is in the final phase of his career and he knows from day to day there are no guarantees. After losing to Rosol, he was out for seven months and, although he has made a spectacular return, winning 35 of 37 matches, he revealed week he still cannot practise for longer than 50 minutes at a time because his knees will not stand it. To get through a five-set match that might last five hours, Nadal has to prepare for an excruciating experience. So does Murray.

When I asked Murray if surgery was an option, a look of dread spread across his face, he paused and whispered: "I don't know … I don't know." His mood mirrored the frustration and anger he felt last year when Virginia Wade, Boris Becker and John McEnroe all wondered about his temperament when he struggled through back pain to beat Jarkko Nieminen early in the French Open. "I'm not accepting it anymore," he said then, "because it's not fair. I think eight painkilling injections [at one sitting] in your back before the French Open justifies a genuine injury."

But he seems to be weary of the needle. Murray's strategy has been to nurse genetic fault lines in his knees and ankles through a schedule that starts in January and ends in November, hoping that the related and potentially more serious problem, the disc-related pain in his lower back that forced him to quit in Rome this week for the first time in 529 matches, will not end it all – or leave him hobbling into his middle age.

He is not alone. Take a look around this tournament in Rome. There were wrecked bodies everywhere: Janko Tipsarevic, Xavier Malisse, Philipp Kohlschreiber, Maria Sharapova, Ekaterina Makarova, Maria Kirilenko, Ayumi Morita … and this is a relatively light casualty list of muscle strains and viruses, the routine price of non-stop travel, practice and competition. Even Roger Federer, 32 in August, took seven weeks off this year to give himself the best chance of winning another slam. Others are knocked out for weeks, months or even years.

On Saturday Venus Williams watched her now fit-again sister Serena beat the Romanian qualifier Simona Halep to reach the final, knowing she herself can never be sure when Sjogren's Syndrome, the incurable auto-immune disease she has had for nearly two years, will cut her down. "It scares me," Venus said recently. But tennis is her life, so she plays on. When she lost to Laura Robson this week, she looked pitifully thin, yet still hit with as much of her old muscle as she could.

Robin Soderling, the only player to beat Nadal in Paris and who has not played since July 2011 because of glandular fever – the virus Heather Watson hopes to beat in time for Roland Garros – articulated best the feeling of despair that can debilitate a professional athlete. "The hope, the hopelessness, then the hope again, then the hopelessness – that really kills me," he said once.

Murray's mother, Judy, reckons he "needs to be cautious". Novak Djokovic offers a tougher assessment. "I've had many occasions in my career when I didn't feel well, when I was injured, and I played all the way through."

Who will Murray listen to? Perhaps the one man who was not in Rome but should have been: his coach, Ivan Lendl. As a player, Lendl twice skipped Paris (where he had already won) to try to add Wimbledon to his other slam victories, although he never managed it. But the strategy was right and, just as Lendl had the poorest shot at Wimbledon, Murray is least likely to win in Paris, especially now. I think Lendl will tell Murray to forget Roland Garros, rest, then give Wimbledon all he has got – because who knows what physical shape Nadal, Federer and Djokovic will be in by then? In this age of week-by-week uncertainty, nobody.

I agree. There is an inference in her comments "he gets nervous and thinks he isn't going to recover" that seeks to minimise a painful physical injury. No small amount of arrogance on the part of Ms. Wade to presume she is qualified to make a medical assessment.